Examining the determinants and outcomes of netizens’ participation behaviors on government social media profiles
| Published date | 16 July 2018 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-07-2017-0157 |
| Date | 16 July 2018 |
| Pages | 306-325 |
| Author | Junpeng Guo,Chunxin Zhang,Yi Wu,Hao Li,Yu Liu |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
Examining the determinants
and outcomes of netizens’
participation behaviors on
government social media profiles
Junpeng Guo, Chunxin Zhang and Yi Wu
College of Management and Economics,
Tianjin University, Tianjin, China
Hao Li
Department of Management Science and Information System,
Guanghua School of Management, Peking University,
Beijing, China, and
Yu Liu
College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China
Abstract
Purpose –Government social media profiles (GSPs) are increasingly used by government agencies
during social crises, and the success of GSPs is highly dependent on netizens’participation behavior (NPB).
Drawing upon the social support theory, the purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical model to
examine the determinants and outcomes of NPB during a social crisis.
Design/methodology/approach –To test the research model, a field survey was conducted in the context
of Tianjin 2015 explosions in China. The authors adopted a two-step approach to test the models. First, the
authors conducted exploratory factor analysis to evaluate the measurement properties of the reflective latent
constructs. Then, the authors performed a structural equation analysis to test the hypotheses.
Findings –The results show that information support and emotional support are significant determinants of
NPB and persona involvement moderates the relationships between them. Additionally, this study reveals
that information source preference and increasing enthusiasm for becoming a civil journalist are two critical
and significant outcomes of NPB.
Research limitations/implications –There are some limitations in this paper that must be taken into
account when interpreting its findings. First, the study is designed on a single profile and concerns a single
social crisis. Additionally, future research might consider incorporating factors beyond the individual level,
e.g., community social capital (Putnam, 1993). Finally, with the emergence of various IT platforms, such as a
government’s own website and online forms, future research can investigate how their characteristics can
facilitate other social media platforms’participation.
Practical implications –This paper offers a number of crucial research implications to the literature of
social media in crisis management, thereby contributing to the explanation of NPB on GSPs in the
management of social crises. Considering social support as a factor affecting NPB on GSPs, the authors
also add personal involvement to the research on the functions of NPB on GSPs and include encouraging civil
journalist and making GSPs the principal source of political information.
Social implications –The research provides participating netizens on GSPs with some suggestions
about generating more cost-effective and useful interventions to improve netizen participation levels on GSPs.
The findings highlight that governmental social media profiles must focus on continuous development, such
as trying best to satisfy the habits of netizens, to motivate netizens to create dependence of information
acquisition on the GSPs, called information source preference. On the other hand, the study reminds netizens
of the importance of NPB on GSPs during crises and encourages them to act as civil journalist.
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 70 No. 4, 2018
pp. 306-325
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-07-2017-0157
Received 6 July 2017
Revised 11 January 2018
28 April 2018
7 May 2018
22 May 2018
Accepted 31 May 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
The authors thank the reviewer team for their constructive comments. This study was supported by
National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71671121), Ministry of Education of
Humanities and Social Science Fund (Grant No. 17YJC630173), Tianjin City Philosophy and Social
Science Planning Project (Grant Nos TJGL17-011 and TJGL15-025).
306
AJIM
70,4
Originality/value –First, the study investigated the outcome effect of NPB on GSPs on netizens’
information source preference and civil journalist. Second, this study identifies the determinants of NBPs on
GSPs from both the informational and the emotional support perspectives. Third, this study investigates the
moderating effects of personal involvement on the relationships between determinants from social support
and NPB on GSPs.
Keywords Social support, Participation behaviour, Personal involvement, Civil journalist,
Government social media profiles, Information source
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
With the rapid development of social media, governments are hoping to explore the
potential for improved communication with social media users to enhance the democratic
process, encourage wider user participation and reduce social isolation (Olphert and
Damodaran, 2007). Government social media profiles (GSPs) are primarily used to disperse
information, particularly linked to their daily activities, and facilitate direct
communication between the agencies and social media users (Golbeck et al., 2010).
GSPs have also proven to serve a particularly crucial function for victims during social
crises. For example, when a magnitude 7.0 earthquake flattened the villages of Ya’an,
China, in April 2013, victims reported their locations and exchanged timely crisis
information at the local GSPs such as government Sina Weibo profile, thereby facilitating
those governments’crisis management activities (Ling et al., 2015). During a crisis, GSPs
not only emerge as an important technology for response, but also provide tools that
enable open online exchange of information (Yates and Paquette, 2010). What is more,
GSPs for social crisis management could be effective in dealing with the necessities of
participation behaviors, such as sharing, commenting, liking and saving GSPs’posts
(Panagiotopoulos and Al-Debei, 2010).
Past literature has primarily examined the accuracy or credibility of broadcasting
information on GSPs during crises (Graham et al., 2015; Houston et al., 2015;
Oh et al., 2013). Participation behaviors have a significant effect on GSPs during a
social crisis. Social media users benefit from sharing information with others, and their
participation helps citizens know the situation faster and appease their emotion. At the
same time, their participation can also provide useful feedback to the government so that
the government can take better measures to deal with the crisis (Yan and Tan, 2014).
In this way, users’participation is essential to government transparency. In spite of
substantial research on online citizen behaviors and the positive effect of government
social media communications on citizen well-being (Bruns et al., 2012; Cho et al., 2013),
such as knowledge management (Alavi and Leidner, 1999; Orlikowski, 1996), information
sharing (Wasko and Faraj, 2005) and contributions to online political communities
(Phang et al., 2015), the outcomes and determinants of participation behaviors on GSPs
during a social crisis are not yet well understood.
Previous literature mostly focuses on the outcomes of participation behaviors for
government. Obviously, participation behaviors provide positive feedback to the
government and increases its transparency (Chang and Kannan, 2008; Dorris, 2007).
However, participation behaviors may also makesomechangestothefuturebehaviorof
social media users. For example, after participation, social media users are more
likely to consider GSPs as primary information sources. The choice of an information
source is important to an information seeker (Xu et al., 2010). Additionally, another
outcome of participation behaviors on GSPs isthatmoresocialmediauserstendtobecivil
journalist. Bowman and Willis (2003) defined civil journalist as “the act of citizens, playing
actively in the process of collecting, reporting, and disseminating information.”
This definition of civil journalist is consistent with the purpose of users’participation
on GSPs. Above all, the first research question of our study is to investigate the outcome
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Determinants
and outcomes
of netizens’
participation
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